With our youngest son and his family due to visit soon, I’ve been thinking about one of life’s great certainties: change.
It arrives – whether we invite it or not – and we resist it before learning to live with it.
That is especially true when change reaches into the home, the family, and the way children are raised. Then it becomes personal. We are no longer discussing progress in the abstract; we are measuring today’s habits against the world we knew.
And that is where the trouble starts: What once looked like common sense to one generation can look old-fashioned and even unreasonable to the next. What seems strange today may in time become perfectly normal.
Those of us who are, as the saying goes, ‘long in the tooth’, do not have to look far for proof. The distance between our childhood and the childhood of our grandchildren is not measured only in years. It is measured in habits, freedoms, expectations and technology.
Children of my generation were expected to be seen rather than heard. We played outside, made friends in the neighbourhood, and turned simple things into entertainment.
A box cart, a homemade toy, or a game invented on the spot could fill an afternoon.
Today’s children inhabit another world, spending more time indoors, connected to screens, music, videos and online platforms. Some of that is by choice. Some of it is due to circumstance. Safety concerns, busier lifestyles and new forms of entertainment have changed the shape of childhood.
Schoolwork has changed just as dramatically. We relied on textbooks, dictionaries and library shelves. Research took time. There was no search engine waiting to answer a question, no artificial intelligence to draft an explanation, and no instant access to the world’s information.
The dinner table was different too. We ate what was served and were expected to finish it. There was little room for negotiation over preferences or alternatives. Parents made the rules, and children generally understood the discussion ended there.
It is tempting to wrap all this in nostalgia and declare the old ways superior. But that would be too easy.
Every generation believes it has the better balance. Every generation also forgets that its own parents probably thought the same about an earlier time.
So, as I prepare for my son’s family to arrive, I’m reminding myself not to confuse difference with decline. Aspects of modern parenting may feel unfamiliar, some may test my patience, but ‘unfamiliar’ does not automatically mean ‘wrong’.
Of course, some things should not change. Appreciation, respect, kindness and consideration do not belong to any one era. They are not old-fashioned values; they are lasting ones.
The real task is to know the difference between principles worth keeping and habits we cling to simply because they’re familiar. Holding on to the past is easy. Carrying its best lessons into the future takes more wisdom.
That is the attitude I hope to have: less resistance, more curiosity, and a willingness to accept that the next generation must find its own way, just as we once did.
Adapting to change is not surrendering the past.
It is making peace with the future while remembering where we came from.
– Danny Meyer is reachable at danny@smecompete.com
